Abstract
Victor Tadros thinks the idea that in a conflict both sides may permissibly use force should (typically) be rejected. Thus, he thinks that two shipwrecked persons should not fight for the only available flotsam (which can only carry one person) but instead toss a coin, and that a bomber justifiably attacking an ammunitions factory must not be counterattacked by the innocent bystanders he endangers. I shall argue that Tadros’s claim rests on unwarranted assumptions and is also mistaken in the light of the moral reasoning that he himself offers in support of his ‘means principle’.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Notes
Tadros talks somewhat misleadingly of the ‘Strategic Bomber’. See Tadros (2011, p. 202). (Page numbers in brackets refer to this text.). I will use the term ‘tactical bomber’ here.
Meanwhile McMahan (2014) has changed his mind. Note that it is also unconvincing to claim that the bystander is merely excused in fighting back. If he were only excused, it would seem that he owed the tactical bomber (or his dependents) compensation if he harms the bomber or even kills him. But that is strongly counter-intuitive: the tactical bomber owes compensation to bystanders he harms, not vice versa. This is even admitted by some philosophers who, like Helen Frowe, deny that the tactical bomber is liable to attack. This speaks to the strength of this intuition. See Frowe (2011, p. 136).
I have elsewhere provided detailed criticisms of the egalitarian endorsement of ‘universal justifiability’ (and of ‘equal moral worth’ and ‘equal respect and concern’, for that matter) as well as detailed analyses of the concept of justification (Steinhoff 2000, 2009, ch. 2, forthcoming). In contrast, neither Tadros nor Scanlon, on whom Tadros relies, have provided any defence of those doctrines or any further analysis of the concept of justification.
Tadros (personal communication) notes that these examples are compatible with his own views since the reason why you don’t have to kill your child here is that this would require you to use your own resources as a means to prevent something very bad from happening, and this would violate the means principle. However, my point here is simply that agent-relative preferences do play a role in action; and if they do play this role precisely on the basis of Tadros’s very own means principle, then this is even worse for his position as far as coherence is concerned. See also the next paragraph and the discussion below.
Actually, I sacrifice (nearly) a 100 per cent probability to save my child. Tossing a coin still leaves me with a 50 per cent probability of saving my child. After the coin is tossed, I either have (if I do what the tossing of the coin requires) a 0 or a 100 per cent probability to save my child.
Tadros (2011, p. 215) gives the example of his ‘rival company’ that ‘causes your business to go under’ and notes that it ‘is natural to say that my business harmed you’. However, if making your business go under counts as harming you, then making you go under literally should of course also count as harming you.
Of course, Tadros might not share my intuitions about this case. It should be noted, however, that Tadros does not provide any argument that would show that my take on this or similar cases is mistaken. Thus, those who do not share his intuitions about the Flotsam case or the Tactical Bomber case already have not been offered a reason to change their own intuitions. Rather, his particular way of applying terms like ‘adopting the lives of those who are rescued as one’s own goal’, ‘bringing about one’s own downfall’, or ‘sacrifice’, so that, for example, in Bear 2 I would sacrifice my arm when I rescue the stranger while the strong-voiced drowning father, allegedly, would not sacrifice his life by keeping quiet in order to save the stranger, would appear to be arbitrary and question-begging.
Some doctrine of double effect accounts of self-defence might deny this, of course, but Tadros himself does not express any sympathy for such accounts.
References
Frowe, Helen. 2011. The ethics of war and peace: An introduction. New York: Routledge.
McMahan, J. 1994. Self-defense and the problem of the innocent attacker. Ethics 104: 252–290.
McMahan, Jeff. 2005. The basis of moral liability to defensive killing. Philosophical Issues 15: 386–405.
McMahan, Jeff. 2014. Self-defense against justified threateners. In How we fight, ed. Helen Frowe, and Gerald Lang, 104–137. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Scanlon, T. M. 2000. What we owe to each other. Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press.
Steinhoff, Uwe. 2000. On the concept, function, scope, and evaluation of justification(s). Argumentation 14: 79–105.
Steinhoff, Uwe. 2009. The philosophy of Jürgen Habermas: A critical introduction. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Steinhoff, Uwe. Forthcoming. Against equal respect and concern, equal rights, and egalitarian impartiality. In Do all persons have equal moral worth? On ‘basic equality’ and equal respect and concern, ed. U. Steinhoff, ch. 8. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Tadros, Victor. 2011. The ends of harm: The moral foundations of criminal law. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Acknowledgments
The research in this paper was supported by a grant from the Research Grants Council of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region, China (Project No. HKU 749413). I am very grateful for this support. I also thank Victor Tadros and an anonymous referee for helpful written comments on previous drafts of this paper.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Steinhoff, U. Why We Shouldn’t Reject Conflicts: A Critique of Tadros. Res Publica 20, 315–322 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11158-014-9250-1
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11158-014-9250-1